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Asian, Middle Eastern and Ethiopic Manuscripts

Some of the earliest texts in the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library are incised in cuneiform script on clay tablets from Sumeria (modern day Iraq); the tablets are upwards of two thousand years old (MS 4687)

There are over 70 Arabic manuscripts including some with Persian, Samaritan, Turkish, Hebrew and Hausa linguistic associations. A large proportion of the texts relate to the Islamic religion and laws; included are nearly 20 Korans

There are 14 texts of Ethiopic origin; they are almost all religious and the languages represented include Amharic and Ge’ez. They date from the 17th to 19th centuries

There are over 70 manuscripts in Persian. They include literary and historical works, grammars or dictionaries and epistolary material (MSS 2798-2861)

Other material originating in India includes a 19th-century treatise on music (MS 1637) in the Kannada language and "Arithmetic tables to count and write higher numbers" (MS 2744. See Colas below). There are also paintings depicting religious figures (MS 1761) and occupations (MS 1760).